File this in the overflowing cabinet labeled: No Wonder the Mainstream Media Is Dying. On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced that it is banishing the phrase “illegal immigrant” from its famous stylebook. The world’s largest newsgathering outlet now advises reporters that “illegal” will “only refer to an action, not a person.”

AP directs writers not to use the terms “illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented” anymore, except “in direct quotations.” It won’t be long before illegal border crossers, illegal visa overstayers, illegal deportation evaders, document fraudsters and illegal alien traffickers are all referred to as “our fellow Americans.” Without the quotations. Mark my words.

AP explains that it wants to stop labeling people. Hah. This is the same organization that employs journalists who have repeatedly shown naked bias against tea party members, gun owners and pro-life activists. AP’s most famous White House correspondent, Jennifer Loven, was such a shameless water-carrier for the Democratic Party that she earned the permanent nickname “Democratic operative Jennifer Loven” on the Internet.

I propose that we banish the term “journalist” when referring to members of mainstream news organizations who pose as neutral news-gathers while carrying out a blatantly ideological agenda. From now on, AP’s staffers shall be described in my columns as “alleged practitioners of journalism” or “journalists” only when using direct quotations.

But I digress.

Just a few years ago, the AP resisted open-borders demands and the pressure of political correctness in favor of pithiness and precision. In 2010, a member of the “Diversity Committee” of the Society of Professional Journalists launched a campaign “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien.” The crusading “journalist” argued that foreign law-breakers should instead be labeled “undocumented workers” or “undocumented immigrants.”

As I told Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle at the time, the idea that “undocumented workers” and “undocumented immigrants” are more objective labels than “illegal immigrants” is complete and utter nonsense. The euphemisms that mainstream “journalists” favor are far more politically loaded than the ones they’re trying to replace.

It’s a farce to call someone an “undocumented immigrant” whose pockets are overflowing with fake, fraudulent documents — and that is usually the case with many of the suspected illegal immigrants featured in AP stories. At the time, the AP agreed.

The persistent use of open-borders euphemisms once again serves as the perfect illumination of the agenda-driven, dominant progressive media.

They’re as activist inside their newsrooms as Vargas is out in the open. Vargas won’t rest until the legal definition of American citizenship is obliterated. And neither will his “journalist” colleagues cheering him on, whitewash brushes in hand.

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.